"She couldn't have cared
about that, and she wouldn't have known. You may be sure that it was a
social question with her after the personal question was settled. She
must have liked your looks!" Again Miss Macroyd laughed.
"On that side I'm invulnerable. It's only a literary vanity to be
soothed or to be wounded that I have," Verrian said.
"Oh, there wouldn't be anything personal in her liking your looks. It
would be merely deciding that personally you would do," Miss Macroyd
laughed, as always, and Verrian put on a mock seriousness in asking:
"Then I needn't be serious if there should happen to be anything so
Westangular as a Mr. Westangle?"
"Not the least in the world."
"But there is something?"
"Oh, I believe so. But not probably at Seasands."
"Is that her house?"
"Yes. Every other name had been used, and she couldn't say Soundsands."
"Then where would the Mr. Westangular part more probably be found?"
"Oh, in Montana or Mesopotamia, or any of those places. Don't you know
about him? How ignorant literary people can be! Why, he was the
Amalgamated Clothespin. You haven't heard of that?"
She went on to tell him, with gay digressions, about the invention which
enabled Westangle to buy up the other clothes-pins and merge them in his
own--to become a commercial octopus, clutching the throats of other
clothespin inventors in the tentacles of the Westangle pin.
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